Photo courtesy of Phil Reuss.
Martin Reuss (1945–2025), an influential member of the Society for the History of Technology, passed away in Newark, Delaware at the age of 80 on November 4, 2025. Marty, as most colleagues knew him, was born in Denver, Colorado on February 25, 1945. Following a subsequent family move, he graduated from Haverford (Pennsylvania) High School, following which he earned a BA in History from the Pennsylvania State University in 1966 focusing on German History and in which language he became fluent. He earned his PhD in History at Duke University in 1971. Marty taught at several different universities including Georgia Southern, Virginia Polytechnic, and UC, Santa Barbara, but for most of his professional life over nearly three decades he worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in its Office of History, where he rose to the position of Senior Historian, Water Resources.
The focus of Marty’s scholarly work combined several fields: history of technology, environmental history, and public history as they related to water resource issues and policies. During his career, he authored over a dozen books and numerous articles and essays focusing on environmental and river water topics. Among his earlier works is Army Engineers in Memphis District: A Documentary Chronicle published in commemoration of the district’s 100th anniversary. Following up on earlier research, Marty authored an important article, “Andrew A. Humphreys and the Development of Hydraulic Engineering: Politics and Technology in the Army Corps of Engineers, 1850–1950.” The essay explored the long-lived impact of Humphreys’ and H.L. Abbott’s 1861 extensive report on the physics and hydraulics of the lower Mississippi River. They proposed a “levees only” policy as the best way to control flooding, which, although subsequently disproven in many ways, retained great influence on the Corps’ work well into the twentieth century. Over time Marty became the Corps’ leading expert on the history of river flooding and water control. His extensive research culminated in his best-known book, Designing the Bayous: The Control of Water in the Atchafalaya Basin, 1800–1995. The Atchafalaya Basin is a critical hydraulic wetland that has endured extensive technological manipulation over the course of two centuries in attempts to control the flow and flooding of the Atchafalaya and Mississippi Rivers. Here the boundaries between technology and nature, if they can in fact be called boundaries, are inextricably intermeshed.
Marty also published several works dealing more broadly with environmental awareness, including water resources, planning, and practice issues. Among them are: Shaping Environmental Awareness: The United States Army Corps of Engineers Environmental Advisory Board, 1970-1980, Reshaping National Water Politics: The Emergence of the Water Resources Development Act of 1986, “Coping with Uncertainty: Social Scientists, Engineers, and Federal Water Resources Planning,” and, as editor, Water Resources Administration in the United States: Policy, Practice, and Emerging Issues. Collectively these works reflect Marty’s maturation as a broad-ranging scholar, observer, and proponent of best practice in environmental and water resource policy.
Marty was a member of numerous scholarly and professional societies, including two of particular relevance here: the Society for the History of Technology and the American Society for Environmental History. SHOT and ASEH provided an intellectual forum and outlet for Marty’s cross-disciplinary interests, which eventually coalesced in the formation of the special interest group, Envirotech, which denies a sharp separation or demarcation between environmental and technological history. Marty was centrally active in both societies and the special interest group. Emerging from early meetings, Marty sensed the need for, and subsequently proposed publishing, a volume that could serve as both a model of and a stimulus for further research on the shifting relationship between nature and technology. Supported initially through a National Science Foundation workshop grant that brought the participating contributors together to share their thinking, The Illusory Boundary: Environment and Technology in History, edited by Martin Reuss and Stephen H. Cutcliffe was the resulting publication serving at that point as a benchmark for the field’s subsequent evolution. In his insightful Afterword, Marty wrote: “Culture . . . becomes the key to understanding human perceptions of both technology and the natural world” (p. 292), and “. . . technological change involves reassessing the human relationship with nature” (p. 298), a view that nicely encapsulates Marty’s overarching viewpoint.
A brief summation of Marty’s scholarship can only highlight a limited understanding of but one component of his life. He was not only a scholar, but a consummate gentleman, mentor to students and colleagues alike, and a devoted family man. He was a member of numerous non-academic organizations, including the Cosmos Club, The Fulbright Association, and Common Cause, and he enjoyed nature outings having been an Eagle Scout. He also enjoyed travelling and cruising with Jane, his wife of many years. Marty was respected by his peers as a committed scholar who displayed rigor and deep knowledge in his own scholarship, while calling for it in the work of others. He will be remembered as a generously supportive colleague and mentor and as a friend with whom one always enjoyed convivial interactions.
Stephen H. Cutcliffe
Cutcliffe, Stephen H., and Martin Reuss, eds. The Illusory Boundary: Environment and Technology in History. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/15953.
Reuss, Martin. “Seeing Like an Engineer: Water Projects and the Mediation of the Incommensurable.” Technology and Culture 49, no. 3 (2008): 531–46. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tech.0.0049.
Reuss, Martin. “Searching for Sophocles on Bourbon Street.” Technology and Culture 47, no. 2 (2006): 349-356. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tech.2006.0147.
Reuss, Martin. “Learning from the Dutch: Technology, Management, and Water Resources Development.” Technology and Culture 43, no. 3 (2002): 465–72. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tech.2002.0135.
Reuss, Martin. “The Art of Scientific Precision: River Research in the United States Army Corps of Engineers to 1945.” Technology and Culture 40, no. 2 (1999): 292–323. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tech.1999.0104.
Reuss, Martin. “Building the Nineteenth Century.” Technology and Culture 40, no. 1 (1999): 145–46. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tech.1999.0032.
Reuss, Martin. Designing the Bayous: The Control of Water in the Atchafalaya Basin, 1800–1995. Alexandria: Office of History, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1998. [College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004.]
Reuss, Martin, ed. Water Resources Administration in the United States: Policy, Practice, and Emerging Issues. East Lansing: American Water Resources Assoc./Michigan State University Press, 1993.
Reuss, Martin. “Coping with Uncertainty: Social Scientists, Engineers, and Federal Water Resources Planning,” Natural Resources Journal 32, no. 1 (1992): 111–15. Available at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nrj/vol32/iss1/6
Reuss, Martin. Reshaping National Water Politics: The Emergence of the Water Resources Development Act of 1986. Fort Belvoir: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Institute of Water Resources, 1991.
Reuss, Martin. “Andrew A. Humphreys and the Development of Hydraulic Engineering: Politics and Technology in the Army Corps of Engineers, 1850–1950.” Technology and Culture 26, no. 1 (1985): 1–33. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/889806.
Reuss, Martin. Shaping Environmental Awareness: The United States Army Corps of Engineers Environmental Advisory Board, 1970–1980. Washington, DC: Historical Division, Offices of Administrative Services, Office of the Chief of Engineers, 1983.
Reuss, Martin. Army Engineers in Memphis District: A Documentary Chronicle. Memphis: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1982.